Brushstrokes

Like many of the Pop artist’s works, Roy Lichtenstein’s “Brushstrokes” were inspired by a comic strip. Lichtenstein modeled his first work in the series, Brushstrokes (1965), after “Strange Suspense Stories #72,” a cartoon by Dick Giordano that depicts a frustrated artist slathering a red “X” over an unfinished painting. Lichtenstein’s recreation of the scene crops closely on the fresh crimson brushstrokes, dripping down a dotted blue canvas in the artist’s signature graphic style. In this work and in the similar “Brushstrokes” that followed, Lichtenstein offers a satirical take on the Abstract Expressionist painters, such as Jackson Pollock and Willem de Kooning, who viewed brushstrokes as symbols of personal expression. Lichtenstein caricatures this view of artmaking by presenting paint splatters as depersonalized, mass-produced cartoons. “The real brushstrokes are just as pre-determined as the cartoon brushstrokes,” Lichtenstein once declared, provocatively calling into question whether the Abstract Expressionists were ever truly as spontaneous as they seemed.